Practicing Resurrection

I hope this finds you having a joyous and blessed Easter week. In the office, we’ve still been catching up after Holy Week, and I am pleasantly excited about all of the opportunities for outreach that have presented themselves recently. Thanks to the fellowship committee, an idea for providing diapers to local families in need is taking shape in the form of the “Diaper Depot” we hope to open the first week in June. It would operate once a month, in the shape of a food pantry but with diapers instead. Diapers are being collected already. We are also trying to purchase our “Easter cow” for a family in need with the Heifer Project. The Heifer Project operates in many countries to help people become economically self sufficient in providing agricultural education and livestock. See www.heifer.org for more information.

This Sunday at 11:15, I hope you’ll join me in watching an informational video on the B Safe (Bishop's Summer Academic and Fun Enrichment) Program held in Boston each summer and discuss if we would like to partner with them in providing this important resource for inner city children. The day camp program runs in July and August in Boston, and has components of athletics, art, and academic enrichment. Partner churches sign up for a week, and serve lunch each day (for about 75 kids) and read with the children during “DEAR” time (Drop Everything And Read). Christ Church would be able to join with another church, so we wouldn’t be doing it all on our own. You might remember when Liz Steinhauser spoke about this program at Bishop Bud’s visitation of last year. I hope you’ll come to the meeting and help Christ Church discern whether there is interest in working with the program. B Safe is a program of St Stephen’s Episcopal Church in the South End, but parishes all across the diocese help to make it possible.

What is exciting about all of these opportunities is that they give us a chance to really celebrate Easter—in the words of poet Wendell Berry, to “practice resurrection.” The resurrection isn’t just something that happened 2000 years ago; it happens now, and we are part of it. God rolled away the stone on Easter morning in the resurrection, and the life and love of Christ burst from the tomb. Today, God asks us to help roll away the stones that harm the wellbeing of people in our world. The heavy stone of dangerous streets, of random shootings and drug deals on the corner; the boulder of poverty, that prevents a baby from having a clean diaper and a full stomach; the rock of despair, where a family sees no way to support themselves. These outreach opportunities that have come before us are real ways that we can help roll away that stone here and now, to practice the resurrection, the gift that God gave us and that we can give others.

Alleluia, Christ is risen!